He Does Not
by rednightmare
Summary: You may doubt and whisper whatever you wish, for Thorin of Durin does not listen, and he does not care. (Character study: incessant lectures, frequent fight-picking, occasional song. Blend of movie-verse and book-verse.)
1. Grey Fool

**Little character introspection quickly written up as a thank you to the friend who took my poor ass to **_**An Unexpected Journey **_**last week. Decided to slap it up here, and am adding more installments when mood strikes. **

**I'm not a Tolkien superfan, but I did enjoy **_**The Hobbit**_** (book and film), so I've tried to blend both renditions; that will result in some unavoidable contradictions to the established canon of one or the other. (The timelines/ages also seem different, but still a fun film.) **

**Enjoy!**

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**HE DOES NOT  
**

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**Grey Fool**

Thorin Oakenshield is a Dwarven prince and he does not mine.

To mistake his statement for disrespect is presumptuous, for there is nothing wrong with mining, nor ought a warrior fault those whose hands touched his steel long before it became swords, axes, clubs and knives. A kingdom of mountain is built upon mines. A blade that cuts orc is melted of mines. Even the coat buttons, beef cleavers, ponies' bits, the edge that he uses to shape the black of his chin – all are metal, and made first from the work of men who mine.

It is not a lowly profession. It is not labor of shame. You have put words in his mouth if you think a Durin-son would disgrace the trade that chipped old Dwarf kingdoms to their heights, etched their great channels, and filled the howl of feldspar coffers with gold.

But it is not a prince's place, and Thorin – who remembers nothing if not the rightful _place_ of things – does not mine.

He thinks this many times. He thinks it with a pick in his hand, a grip swung overhead, with pebbles burst from cavern walls. He thinks it with iron mist in his lungs and so much dust on his body that it turns raven braids into birds that have rolled in the dirt. One day he will think it with a wry, dry twitch in his cheek, with his nephews bickering behind him, over the pregnant knolls of a green-grass Shire. But for now – in a time before his full name was won, in the weeping grove away from Erebor, when grief's red fingers are still fresh and nothing shields his arm but skin – Thorin of Thráin of Thrór works a mine until blood blisters through the wrappings on his palms.

It is the darkest kind of dark in the belly of a mine. You see nothing that is not lit by lantern or torch – not the wink of your tools, not the dull glean of mineral, not the texture of hands made rough upon slag. Yet there are many colors and textures of that darkness, many varying degrees. It changes with every level you clamber lower towards the land's core. Thorin's unusual size (for he is a Durin) means this dwarf lord may toil high, hauling crates in the shallows, where sun warmth still sinks though soil overhead. He feels badly for those who must climb deep. The ropes they tie fast 'neath their arms groan the support beams; Thorin worries, and he frets, and it all shows in how the once-prince frowns. A hundred years of worry and fret and frown will deepen the structure of his face, prematurely bleed silver through ebon, but for now discontent defines how the Folk regard him. It is work, not battle, carving the fearsome nature hobbit tales will bestow upon Middle-Earth's last true King Under the Mountain. You can see none of it in the cold damp nothingness that swallows them up in a hole.

He binds his raw palms and hoists a pickaxe, he carries ore and chokes on soot, but Thorin Oakenshield does not mine. His blow cripples stone. He fights. Every day, he fights.

Thorin Oakenshield is a Dwarven prince and he does not chop wood.

There is not much use for lumber in Erebor – Erebor, citadel of a race harder than oak, where _stone cold_ is not a saying but a part of who they are. It is not fit to build anything proper with. It is not lasting enough to make crafts of substance. And it does not matter greatly, for the folk in Dale shout enough timber and saw enough trunks to suffice what needs their neighbors have. Thorin has never wasted his thoughts upon this trade. And why ought he now? Perhaps your people find it to be tougher stuff than his; to dwarves, to those forged from bedrock and lava, tree wood is for nothing but children's weapons and cooking pits.

One day tree wood will be all that stands between death and a prince in the hot fist of rage, full of magma, charging for the pale hide that holds Grandfather's head before realizing there is nothing in his hands. One day tree wood will stop short Azog the Defiler's mace. One day tree wood will give him his war-call and his hero fame – but today, it splinters and groans and falls weakly beneath the nose of an axe never intended for bark.

It is an unpleasant sort of chill on this forestline. The air is thick, damp and smells of rotted moss. It made him ill when they first entered these wetter ranges, before his people settled in mountains said to be bluer than the larimar-green of a Durin's eye. Thorin would cough in the morning from sumac and woodchips, cough in the evening from mine soot, cough and cough and cough. It is all their people do in Dunland. He fears selfishly this fog will ruin his voice, but it never does, and it is not so selfish to preserve your ashes of heritage in whatever ways were left. The birch dust rises. A prince ignores the mud plastered to his shins and he works.

He cleaves crude halves into pulpy fir and snapping elm; he saws white aspen; but Thorin Oakenshield does not chop wood. He splits and divides. He builds his sister a house to birth his nephews in – not fit, not lasting – a sparse, ugly cottage of clay and dead tree. He _builds_.

Thorin Oakenshield is a Dwarven prince and he does not smith.

Even you, gaunt and brittle as you are, must know that this craft – of all crafts – is the dearest to a dwarf. In their very meat and marrow is the craving for metals that glow. In Erebor, you hear symphonies of workers culling, heating, molding, shaving at all times – for _shine_ is the currency and calling of a lonely fortress perched upon riches too deep for the gropings of Men. Their home hosts more smiths than warriors. So much _making_ to be done: jewelling, bladework, pot-pouring, brass-welding, copper-bending, ingot-casting, steel-plating, armor-latching, coin-etching, gem-cutting. Ferocious fighters they are, but beyond anything else, this is the lifeblood of those who live under the mountain cold.

There is nothing to be sniffed at in such art. Dwarves love what is beautiful and strong. They love what lasts. But save for special ceremonies, personal hobbies or battlefield repairs, smithing is hardly something princes are expected – or asked – to do. So Thorin Oakenshield does not.

The Dunland midday is not merciful or mild. There is hummock fog soaking his shirt. There is s a mess of swart hair twisted beneath sunlight at the back of his neck – even the proudest heirs find it hard to care about lineage braids when surrounded by ragged peoples, a pox-spotted father and all their fingernails broken off. This first humid summer sends many Durin-folk huffing to bedrolls. None of them still standing can afford not to work. And work Thorin does – breaks and cleans the iron he's mined – hammers it not into amulets or swords, but into beams, nails, forks, and indeed, into whatever other unspectacular, unbeautiful, simple thing needs making.

Tools made for human hands are tall and unwieldy, like humans themselves. If he had afore learned the skill (for their master smiths all lay dead by drake fire), he would have used these poor utensils to make another, better set. Thorin holds his missized tongs as straight as he can. At each strike, he feels the clang from wrist to arm, through chest and stomach; it rumbles his ribs and rattles the teeth in his jaw.

"_This is the work of our first fathers' fathers,"_ Father tells him, humble honors, mantras repeated between the bouts of coal-black blood he spits at night. _Our first fathers_. Perhaps there is some comfort in that, Thorin thinks, as he hands him a bucket and an ale-soaked cloth. Perhaps there is some brief solace of being a dwarf at a smoldering forge, even a disappointing and ungainly one. It is a thing that comes naturally, a task of worthy aspirations and the powerful foundations of bastion doors.

But it is not the work of a king.

One day Thorin will boil a pot of jewelry – treasures pulled from killed friends and dead foes – and from that hard-won gold will smelt himself an instrument of rough loves. It is a poor replacement for what is lost, but this will do for an exiled prince. He knows more was meant for him. In Erebor, there is a fine harp waiting, two men high, strings of horse gut, body beauteous mithril and ivory. He still hears how the notes would echo and pine in those cavernous court halls. Often would Thorin play for his grandfather – old music, the blood songs of dynasties before them – melodies mournful and proud. Dwarves are a sorrowed, arrogant people with much to be arrogant about and much to be sorrowful for; but some must keep the stories, too.

So it goes with rulers and castaways. In these nights, as they sleep unceilinged in camps bitter with wind and not basalt, Lonely Mountain's throneless king will take the hand of his son's son and ask for songs. Now this young princeling has no polished crown or shining harp. He has neither fine furs nor moonstones in his braids. But he has his voice, and if there ever was a voice of Durin, it is the clear dark voice of Thorin of Thráin of Thrór.

"_That tongue of yours is a terror, son-of-my-son," _Erebor's lord of yesterday would chide in a court chamber, insults half-meant, favoritism plain as the rubies on his second heir. So many gifts given; so much faith vested in ebon-maned princes with sharp, vain egos; so many nobles left blustering in mute embarrassment at some offense a young royal dared say at his predecessor's side. Father would bellow _silence_ in all his best roars; his grandsire only tutted and laughed. _"Better you would never speak but for to sing."_

One day, Thorin will not speak so much; his vain ego will be chiseled down, sculpted into a curt and mighty pride, wintry as a lonely mountain; and his voice will be heard only when there is potent sentiment or purposeful need. The vestibules of pompous preening are behind. These are the traits that must be hardened or heated out.

Thrór of Dáin of Náin is an old, old dwarf; a waylaid, dying sovereign, head gone sick with greed dashed and grief immeasurable. As his heirs melt iron, they long for bygone days. And Thorin sings his grandfather from feeble-minded madness to sleep beneath an open, homeless sky.

Beneath the waking sun, these chants and lyrics are haunts of memory between hammer and anvil. He hums in the quiet of his head. He punctuates stanzas with the pound of another bolt done. He makes barrelsful of hinges and he makes practical things and he makes his soft princely hands coarse – but Thorin Oakenshield does not smith. He remembers in smoke and heavy blows. He honors. He wars.

Thorin Oakenshield is a Dwarven prince and he does not pamper the dead.

But so many are they – those killed, those missed, those succumbed to their exile and woe. There are fleshy corpses and crackling skeletons and bodiless memories lost. There is ash that settles in steaming bulwarks and markers littering the highways that brought them here. There are more dead than princes and kings can count.

Thorin has known this since he watched scarlet wings bear down from the thickets outside his home. At no time does he feel the weight of defeat more heavily than when they start digging graves.

It is dwarfish custom to entomb or burn. Planting the deceased is an odd practice done by more delicate peoples with delicate earth. They do not treat dead bodies with the same squeamishness as you, for as warriors know, flesh is a vessel, and only a shell when the soul pours out. The Elves say their ancestors of oldest yore, before Erebor or Durin or Khuzdul tongue, used to eat them. This does not bother the pragmatic Dwarf nearly as much as some might hope. But history is history, and now is now, and rituals (be they courtly or cannibal) will unfold as they will. The sad state of things remains plain. There is no burning or tomb-building to be done here – for they have no undying slate, and pyres would only draw down orcs from their rot-caves, slavering for child meat.

So they dig, and they bury the vessels of family in sodden, foreign mud.

Of all these unroyal tools he has come to use since they left the Lonely Mountain, a shovel is the most effacing. He throws dirt over his shoulder until the death-holes are just deep enough not to be by wolves undug. They cannot pause in this grim task – one quite without forewarning – for always are the elders and infants at sickly risk. Troves of youngling bones, of women pleats, of white-beards, scatter the paths Erebor's orphans have walked. No rites or gemstones have they to adorn them, to lessen the hurt. And there are uncountable hurts. Dwarves do not believe suckling babes have souls, but when he sinks the grain sack that wombs cousin Dori's not-yet-son, there is strange breathlessness in the cove of his chest. This is the labor of collapse. It puts an ache in Thorin's back that never fully fades.

One day the griefs will overspill and he will lament no more, but anger – doom-driven, undimming – shall root and twine for the length of this prince's life.

You have, no doubt, felt terrible shames during the many decades of your antique life. But you have never ruled anything. He can see that in the errant way you stand and in the wanderlust your fading eyes, fae as they are, still kindle. You have never ruled anything, and you cannot comprehend that kind of loss.

The wandering dwarves tend no dead-yards or catacombs like those beneath Erebor's heart for many years. One day Thorin of Thráin, oak bark newly smashed on his arm, will set aflame a hill – a hill mortared by blood, stacked from the muscle of slain brothers – a hill so high he can see no sickle sun beyond the dread mist of Moria. But today, and the next day, he digs low. There is a question of succession and the goriest of hopes on his mind.

Time blurs all but the purest gold and stoutest stone. Yet this prince of Durin will ever remember how his fathers and brothers – once almighty, now beaten – wept for lines clipped short, mourned heirs they would never know. Small bodies blue thrown in with wrinkled ones forgotten. And on spade and shovel, he makes himself an ironclad promise. No son of his will mold in the muck like a wastling elf. Dís is fast fat with Fili (scandalously fast) but Thorin – Thorin will have no children wailing their birth cries outside the boom of Erebor rock. He will take no wives or concubines until there are diadems and satin and snow lion furs to bristle upon their shoulders, heads, hands. He will dress his queen in dragon scale, and she will sit upon a divan of Smaug's tooth, talon, bone.

And should his family die, they will have opals upon their shrouds.

This does Thorin II make his oath.

If you underestimate him, you are a knock-knee and a fool, old man. One day in the future you will meet him in Bree, and he will be most impressive with the wild wood of his armor and dusk of his long mane, but beneath that mazarine hood is a man who has already impressed you. Scoff at him now in shirtsleeves and sweat lines. Laugh if you can – go on, scarecrow, he dares you to – for the opinions of fossils mean nothing to lords. You have no idea what a Durin is on the field of war. You have no idea how deep and deadly this blaze of desire runs.

He is not a smith. He is not some dog-whipped hero panting for sapphires and dreaming churlishly of a bleached alabaster throne. He is birthright. He was born to be King.

But there is, from this timbered marsh where his shovel plunges and his voice carries far, a very long way to fight. Thorin's claims are diamond-true but a rightful king must first have a rightful kingdom. And he is not the same magpie prince whose somber bass drenched pumice halls in hero tales. The magpie has become a crow; the romances of olde have become a vengeance curse, a tragedy to shake peaks apart. Of his fine things, his instruments, his rings, his silver daggers and mink boots and silk capes – oh, he has sold them, sold them all and then some, sold for bread and lodgings and the tangy bite of meaningless coin. He had clung so tightly to small treasures in the broken forest roads as they few survivors walked, sobbing, from Erebor – walked with barren pockets, broken vows, wyrm smoke in their mouths and no songs but the weight of their own wails and screams. For it is mourning that has become the song of Erebor: a dirge of riches, castles, stone and sons. And sure and sturdy and terrible as Durin before him: Thorin Oakenshield will sing it.

He does not hew trees. He does not tend boneyards. He does not heave through the moist tar of loam miles deep, does not scrape shale, does not cough up the metal air in those grueling hours before dawn.

Thorin Oakenshield is the King of a Lonely Mountain – and he does, he does, he does dig graves.

One day they will return to Erebor. One day there will be victory chorus and oiled strings. One day, he will put this world and all things in it within their proper place again. And if you doubt him, wizard Grey, then may your long beard burn bare in the bowels of Khazad-dûm.

Thorin Oakenshield is a Dwarven king, and he will serve no one when the titan doors of Erebor split their locks and shed their claws and a thousand gems hum to the rule of a singing lord again.

But for now, he works, and yes – in the height of a dry, dirt noon – he mines.


	2. Brash Child

**Because book Thorin lectures endlessly and movie Thorin is always furious – and that combination practically writes itself – another one has spawned.**

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**Brash Child**

He does not, Master Burglar, sing on command.

Thorin Oakenshield is neither bard nor minstrel nor a creaky wizard's skald, so he does not understand why you seem to confuse a mountain king for a performer. Your hobbit eyes must be very bad in this highland light, indeed. Has the snow chill of pine ranges that is so pleasing to dwarves made you ill again? Perhaps fever is responsible for your demanding such a thing (and in such offhand, cavalier fashion); he cannot imagine it is in _character_, halfling, having already seen what Shirelings call courage. And he notes how pitiably you are crouching near the flame.

Indeed: some sickness, then. It must have grabbed the tongue right out of your slack, dimpled face. For only a fool or a very stricken man would kick his heels upon a dwarf campfire, puffing that damnable toy pipe like you do, and makes insolent suggestions with such a smug, churlish smile.

Yes, you have heard him correctly. Stricken, insolent, smug. And that is to say nothing of your imprudence, or your arrogance – for how daring must you think yourself to _request_ of a Durin?

"_Give us a song, Thorin."_

Who do you reckon you are?

He can answer for you: you do not know.

You mean no harm by it, you say. It is only a song. You were only having fun – thought it would be _nice_, Hobbit, did you? – storyteller atmosphere, pleasant diversion. Perhaps you are not so unwell, then, as to be completely oblivious; because that impetuous mouth sucks back, snaps shut, when it realizes its mistake. You are not so sight-impaired to miss the anger spark in a Durin's slate eye, a bad hammer blow at a smoky forge. Your grotesquely large ears hear well enough to detect the warning, the icewind, when coolly asked _"Fond of dwarfsong, are you, halfling?"_ And, though he stands far from you across their pit – for princes do not sit near to weaklings or grocers – you are not amiss to the insult Thorin Oakenshield takes to your "fun."

Whatever you babbled to quit the field was useless, as your fumblings all have been. You say nothing-words like "well" and "suppose" as you try to mete out the most toothless version of what you meant. _Well, suppose_ all you like. What halflings mean is of no consequence to Erebor's king.

So he digs on: are their hymns, chant and lore _relaxing_ to a townsman? Do they _amuse_ you? Does the voice of a Durin lull you to sleep, drowsy on chords of grievous battle and unfathomable loss? You would not dare say so now, not dare belittle a dwarfish lord – but you pull your feet off the log they were on, so you must have feared to answer wrong. And you look (as you do with increasing, irritating frequency as of late) for aid from your companions… as though they are indeed _yours_ and not his – his people, his fellowship. You find none. You, burglar, should expect no help from others, for dwarves do not coddle the frail. Even you must learn to stand to walk, fight, speak on your own.

Or you will die – die, unknown and unvindicated and gasping orc iron in grey steppe mud – as so many who sang the songs that soothe you have.

This is the diversion you ask for, hobbit.

He does not know and does not care what music means to halfling pumpkin-farmers, sheep-keepers, cotton-growers – if it is but an entertainment, a distraction, something _nice_. He does not concern himself with smaller peoples. But you will know that song is a serious act of Dwarves.

And you may find, as you go, that it is all the more serious to Prince Thorin of Thráin of Thrór.

Go on, then, hobbit. Tell him what it is you'd most fancy hearing – what you feel thoroughly fits the napping mood of a slight, flimsy creature soft at his middle and scrawny-armed. Perhaps they should put on a grand show for the sake of your gladness and good night's rest – let you sample their mythos and see what sounds prettiest to you at the moment. Would that suffice, Master Burglar, from these strange travelers in your company? Dwarves are a bizarre, outlandish and exotic folk, your precious books say; given easily to merriment, comradeship, drunken ballads over mead and tall tales. They harbor madcap, humorous greed for jewels. They will sell their mothers for a gold piece. They are backwards and barbaric and caught in the haze of old limestone ways.

Hobbit, if you look for fables and fair-weather friends, you have found the wrong dwarves.

They are not those chortling, laughing bankers of the gently south your mother's bedside yarns told you, who snap at rubies and spring grown from dirt piles. They are Mountain-Made – Durin's pride. Their strides are great and hair dark and bodies more granite than skin. Theirs are a people mortared from the coldest cloud-mist, fiercest fighting, sanguine tragedy, most bitter earth. Thorin has no mirth to offer in harp and shanty. He is not a jovial fairytale king.

You wonder why such a king would doubt you, burglar? No, perhaps you do not.

Should he sing you the legends of his people? You know nothing of Erebor and less of the names _Durin_, nothing of the language _son-of_. You shudder and pale in this hawkish cliff weather, a climate that foraged a lofty race. You sneeze at the scent of pine. You could not possibly appreciate them – not with your ears tweaked for songbirds, your flower-hands, and your halfling eyes made for seeing lands of green.

Well, hobbit: there is no bounty green to be had amongst the mountain rock.

Shall he sing you the song of Náin the First, Endurer of Hell, whose crown was doused in the filth of a balrog from which he would not flee? Shall he sing to you of the terrible black hunger of dwarves – how gold hums to them as a sweet silver bell – their siren curse to love the power riches trap in shape, in form? Of territory and claim-making? Of how he has seen the madness of gemshine make brother kill brother with bloody fists and bloodier bites? This does not seem to interest you from the way you stare and cringe.

Shall he sing you the dwarfish lullabies Fili and Kili have now outgrown, of bleak winters and warm hearths and the trickery of fauns? The treachery of elves? Will you chicken-scratch these stories across your messy journal papers to tote some fragment back to a soft, green hobbit home? You will fail. If you care to try your scribbling hand at history, however, there is the legacy of great Belegrost and a mighty Dragon-Helm. There are the war marches his mother taught him whilst she threaded onyx and goldstone in his braids, of glorious death and fearlessness and how to guzzle your enemies' tears. They are the same ones he taught to his sister-sons, the ones that – even without crystal beads for memory – they can recite by heart. _Baruk Khazâd__! _ Does that seem the type of thing you would like?

If these are too warlike for your _preferences_, hobbit, might he better sing gently of the Vala Aulë-Who-Created Our Fathers' Fathers? What purpose would that serve, he wonders. Our Fathers are not yours, brash child of the West, and none of this great sorrow or violence could you ever understand.

Or shall he sing to you the most wicked poetry of them all – the Desolation of Smaug – of how Erebor washed red with drake-fire, child-blood, death heat? Of how mad was his father's cry at glimpsing his grandfather's severed head in the Delving sunlight, long beard chopped, dangled by a malignant white demon over another birthright ripped from them? Of how many died and died and died again to retake what has been so sorely lost? Of irony, of disaster beyond any of which a people has ever known but his – of how all their gilt glory Under the Mountain poured to thick, yellow flame that melted and ate them as they ran?

No, hobbit. There is no lyric for that.

You are sorry. You are ignorant. But it is not a prince's responsibility to educate you. He does not have the patience or the time to suffer fools. And dwarves do not think of music as little Shirelings do.

(You are told later – by Fili; a Durin, no less – that this is rubbish; that dwarves, too, knit their happy carols, and it is but Thorin of Thráin whose voice is only for greatness and sorrow. The choice of which prince ought be believed is yours. He does not know what his nephews say, nor does he care to debate with them. They feel Erebor in their stitchings, but are orphan-kin; they know not the full weight of what was once, now gone.)

What you hear is not in any case what you judge it to be. You remember with maiden longing the night at Bag End – your last taste of home, good parchment, gourmet spices and bedclothes – but halfling, know this: that song was not meant for you. You are a little sneaking half-man. What use have those like you of dwarven tales, of dwarven song, of heroes whose roars knocked the hearts from dragons and shambled the spines of giants?

If you look for a ballad, look elsewhere. Nothing he has would lighten your heart. Nothing of Dwarves is cast of a metal your small, weak soul could with(under)stand.

You may not know who you are, burglar, but of Thorin's blood-call, there has never been any doubt. Of yours? You are not a proper respectable halfling, though you protest to be. You are not a fellow, not brother warrior. Not a Baggins, not a Took. You are not and will never be Mountain-Made – you are merely the little man from the last grassy knoll that ran off on a whim and a wizard's daydreams to ride in the shadow of Dwarves. That is your saga: one of a chasing child. That is all they shall say of you – if, indeed, there is cause for them to say anything at all.

Whether you can muster meddle to change the sad footnote you are is not his place to say. Thorin's place is to rule and _take back_. He does not tolerate those wandering minds whom have picked no purpose for themselves. That is a shortcoming kings and princes cannot abide, will not tolerate. That is impertinence. _That_ is what weakness is. He has nothing to say – and, to be sure, Master Hobbit – no songs to share with the type of man you are.

It comes, one day soon, that you will be very brave. Your halfling eyes, made for sunlight, made for seeing green, see fire on fangs of a pale monster. Your flower-hands steal blood from a brute with an axe. Your ears – tweaked and large as they are – do not want to listen to the head and body of a mountain king torn apart, ripped asunder like Thrór before him, skull triumphantly held aloft by his lion's mane of thick black hair.

They would have cut out his tongue, put out the bluestones of his eye. They would have pulled each scale from his armor and made it into trophies for a Defiler's wall. They would have chopped off his fingers for every dwarf ring and stripped bear fur from his coat and ears from his face. The rest would have filled the belly of a large white warg. This Thorin knows bitterly well. He can still feel the gouge of its teeth in his ribs. He can still feel the doom of his unsung death.

And he does not deny the chill this knowing flares down his spine – for Durin's prince has been hard against you, hobbit, and mocking, and cruel – but there are nights in which even kings are afraid.

One day soon, it will not matter that you are not a warrior. It will not matter that you are not Mountain-Made. You are small and foolish, weak in body and skill, but you are the first his brothers to stand. That is how they will remember you. That is how the Folk in dawns not yet come will sing of Bilbo Baggins, Master Burglar, King-Guard. And should they forget you – for the memory of dwarves is long, but mortal– know that Thorin Oakenshield chooses to remember brave blade and willing heart, and he does not so much recall the other, meaningless things.

You will be very brave – very brave, indeed – but you are still a brash child. And, as brash children and little halflings do, it comes not long later that do you fall terribly, horribly ill on the cloud-cold carrock towards Erebor.

And then it comes that Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, will sit near by you at the fireside – and should it help you sleep, hobbit – he will sing for you whatever you wish.

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**Regularly with _Thorin & Company_:**

**Bilbo: Hey Thorin, did you want one of these sandw—  
Thorin: WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE  
Bilbo: ….iches.  
Everyone: …  
Thorin: god damn WEAK motherfucking HONOR and DWARF meddling son of a DURIN worthless ELVES bitching MOUNTAIN  
[Snatches sandwich, storms off.]  
Bilbo: What just happened. **

**Dwarves, Bilbo. Dwarves. **


End file.
